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Photo: Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World |
OUTSIDE SEGMENT
(People are asked to gather in a circle and light their candles)
Kay Huggins
We are gathered in this space as people of faith to contemplate on hunger and poverty and our response as people of faith.
We come into the presence of our Creator with humble hearts, recognizing that we are powerless on our own. We recognize our indebtedness to God.
But we also come together in this circle with the knowledge that as human beings we are all connected to each other. In recognition of our common bonds, please take this opportunity to greet your neighbor to your right and to your left.
Please light your candles and join us in a few moments of silent reflection. The candle represents a light of hope.
Before we begin, I would ask that we first center ourselves in God and consider the following verse from Matthew 22. A version of this account is also found in Mark 12 and Luke 10.
Mike Shawver
“When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
This is the greatest and first commandment.
And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’
Musical Interlude
Come and Fill (Instrumental)
Carlos Navarro
Early this year, Bread for the World helped organize a coalition of Christian denominations and organizations committed to resisting budget cuts that undermine the lives, dignity, and rights of poor and vulnerable people.
As the coalition was forming, Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, Tony Hall, executive director of the Alliance to End Hunger, and Rev. Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, began a fast during Lent to draw attention to FY2011 budget proposals that drastically cut programs for hungry and poor people. Thousands of activists, leaders of nonprofit organizations and corporations, and people of other faiths joined them in urging Congress to protect these programs. When the FY2011 budget was passed, the cuts to these programs were lower than had been originally proposed.
David Beckmann explains the urgency for us to act.
"Everything we have achieved for poor and hungry people in the last 35 years is under severe threat of budget cuts—nutrition programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and SNAP (formerly food stamps), as well as poverty-focused development assistance," he says.
The fast and the Circle of Protection campaign generated extensive print, radio, and television coverage. And thousands of people have raised their voices through letters, phone calls, and personal visits to Congress; through letters to the editor and opinion pieces; through discussions at town hall meetings and call-in shows.
And even though Congress moved to make some reductions in the budget for fiscal year 2011, the cuts to important programs were lower than had been originally proposed.
As the budget discussions for fiscal year 2012 move forward, we will continue to raise our voices. Our faith does not allow us to stand still on this, so we remain steadfast in urging Congress to protect the most vulnerable people in our global society when they make future spending decisions.
Michaela Bruzzeze
Inspired by a common spiritual conviction that God has called on all Americans to protect the vulnerable and promote the dignity of all individuals living in society, we take this opportunity to pray for a just and compassionate federal budget. We appeal to our federal legislators and our president to protect those struggling to overcome poverty in the U.S. and abroad, and to exclude programs that protect people in poverty from the U.S. budget deficit debates.
We believe that the federal budget is a moral document. We affirm government’s role in serving the common good. We have come to Washington to meet with Congressional leaders and to join with you in daily prayer for a global economy and a federal budget that break the yokes of injustice, poverty, hunger and unemployment throughout the world.
Daniel Erdman
Como fieles cristianos, urgimos al Congreso y la administración a otorgar una prioridad moral a los programas que protegen la vida y dignidad de los más pobres y necesitados en estos tiempos difíciles, en nuestra quebrada economía y en nuestro lastimado mundo.
Musical Interlude
Come and Fill (sung)
Diane Martinez Hursh. liturgical dancer, leads People into Sanctuary
INSIDE THE CHAPEL
Debbie Ruiz
Let us begin by pondering a bit about hunger and poverty.
Hunger. Everyone agrees that it should not exist. And yet, the statistics tell us that hunger is prevalent.
More than 1 billion people in the world go hungry.
In the United States, over 49 million people—including 16.7 million children—live in households that struggle to put food on the table. That means one in seven households in the U.S. are living with hunger or are at risk of hunger.
So what is hunger? I can give you a clinical definition.
Hunger pains occur when an individual has not consumed food or drink for an extended period of time. Muscle contractions begin to occur when the stomach has been empty for several hours. As the contractions take place, the sensation may be somewhat unpleasant and interpreted as painful.